


External Conflict

by Paranoxx



Category: Dragon Ball, Vegebul - Fandom
Genre: Dark emotions, Depression, F/M, Family Feels, Fatherhood, Hope, Lonliness, More characters to be added, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Redemption, Reunions, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, Sequel, Slow Build, Violence, little lemon, self smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23738785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paranoxx/pseuds/Paranoxx
Summary: Space... This is the sequel to Internal Conflict. It gets dark, so be warned and it's on going. Vegeta is alone. He is a mess. And he's finally going all out.
Relationships: Bulma Briefs & Vegeta
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My Prince is alone in space, training. He will have to confront the fact that he does have the same kinds of feelings he finds so contemptuous in humans, this time without anyone to help him get through it. I've written quite a few chapters already and since the website will not allow me to import them in their original format, please bear with me. If there are type errors, forgive me, I have to try to format the work in the post box. But If you liked Internal Conflict, I hope you will stay with me for this one. Vegeta is my Prince and I've tried to show the way I see him.

CHAPTER 1

  
_Space sucks._

  
Vegeta laid on his back, probably broken a little (maybe a lot) and feeling a little stupid. He’d thrown a ki blast or three at the bots that swirled around him like tiny, angry faeries and one of them had made it through his defenses. The damned thing had hit him in the back, hard. It was his own power. So, in effect, he had managed to knock himself out cold. That was embarrassing. Or would be if there was anyone else to see it happen.

  
Flat on his back, the great Saiyan Prince, was glad there was no one to witness his small defeat. He tried to breathe. The pain in his back was not something to be easily ignored.

  
_Space really sucks. I wish_ …

  
Vegeta didn’t finish that thought. That train of thought had been in his head too much lately. It needed to stop.

  
The Woman.

  
He rolled over and ignoring the way his back felt, rose into the air to confront the bots who would not attack again until he took his position. When the blasts came and the little machines began to swirl around him( their programming teaching them to move when he did) Vegeta saw the smiling face of the human Woman who had made them.

  
_Yeah, I fucking hate space._

  
Fifteen minutes later and he was on his back again. Vegeta threw his arms out and spread his legs, relaxing. It had been a consolidated 27 hours since he’d started this session. He was exhausted. Being a Saiyan, it wasn’t exactly in his nature to take rest when his body was spent. However, Vegeta knew that if he were to sleep, he would wake up stronger than he had been when he laid down. He was so tired. His body hurt so badly. Turning off the gravity machine wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. As soon as the pressure disappeared, he remembered why he loved Earth so much.

  
_If the Woman was here, she would…_

  
Vegeta turned over onto his stomach. He pushed himself up onto his arms and stood. It was misery but he gave his spikey head a sharp shake, getting to his feet. The Prince was covered in dried blood. He hated that. He was also hungry. That was worse. Vegeta hated the fact that his legs shook under him and that his strong arms felt like ramen noodles.

  
_Her favourite food._

  
The Prince plodded his way to the area that served as a kitchen in the ship. Running a hand back through his thick hair to push it out of his eyes, Vegeta peered into the fully stocked cupboard before him. 

  
_Easy. That’s why she loves these._

  
He took one and then three more of the cups of noodles out of the pantry, using the hot water from the sink to fill them. One at a time the Saiyan Prince put them into the microwave/heating unit. There was no stove in the GR.

  
Sitting at the tiny table, Vegeta used the sticks to lift the noodles to his mouth and he felt alone. At the Compound, Panchi would have been there with him, doting and weird. Bulma’s father would have been there; trying good naturedly to have a conversation about something Vegeta couldn’t have cared less about. The blue haired human Woman would have been there and tried to engage him. He would have found a way to touch her under the table. Welcomed the brush of her fingers on his thigh in a secret caress.   
At that moment he would have given so much to hear one of their voices. To see one of those human faces. 

  
_Space sucks. In so many ways._

  
He still wasn’t sure that leaving Earth had been the right choice for his continued sanity. There was so much about it that he missed. Having spent the better part of his life alone, for all intents and purposes, he hadn’t factored loneliness into his equations when he’d made the decision to go out into space. It had been the right call and he knew that. But it had been anything but easy.

  
Bulma herself had been the one to convince him it was what he needed to do. For her sake and that of the little life growing inside her. For his own sake.   
The food filled him enough to stop the grinding emptiness in his stomach. It did nothing to fill the silence. Oddly dejected, Vegeta went to the personal to wash. A tiny room with a sink, a toilet and a shower stall. The water burned when it hit his wounds, not that such a thing would stop him from scrubbing his skin mercilessly. Being dirty was just not a thing that the Prince could abide. Once he’d finished, Vegeta took a moment to look in the round mirror over the sink. Turning, he looked over his shoulder at his back. 

  
_That’s going to leave a mark._

  
He’d managed to hit himself just to the left side of his spine, below his shoulder blade. Just one more scar to add to his collection. The starburst shaped wound would heal. Vegeta didn’t really care, the Woman had no disgust when it came to his scars. She’d kissed them.  
He had the Senzu, which would heal him instantly, but he decided that it wasn’t worth it to waste one just to end the discomfort he was currently experiencing. Instead, he brushed his teeth and went to bed, not bothering with anymore clothes. 

  
The bed was a luxury. Bulma had installed it on purpose, knowing that he would have very little to comfort him while he trained. It was soft enough to surround his body and firm enough to support his weight. Memory foam, she called the material, and one of Earth’s most useful inventions. 

  
_God’s, I miss Earth._

  
Vegeta sat on the bed and was disappointed by the fact that it was so much smaller than the giant one he’d shared with Bulma. He took a small brush from the table next to it and began to brush his tail. It wasn’t necessary but the Prince did it everyday because it felt good. He didn’t hate the bed. He hated the fact that the Woman wasn’t in it.   
“Wake up!” Vegeta called out to the tablet that was one of the only things he had brought with him. The little rectangle lit up at the sound of his prompt and he directed it to play anything from the violin. Music filled the small space, taking the silence away. Somehow that made him feel less lonely. 

  
When the fur of his tail was as smooth and shining as he felt it should be, Vegeta laid back and pulled the coverings over himself. Since lying on his back was out of the question, the Prince curled on his side and buried his face in the pillows. One can never underestimate the value of goose down comforters or feather filled pillows. Inwardly, he thanked Bulma for her consideration in putting such things in the GR. 

  
Vegeta gave the command to put out the lights and laid still in the dark. His body was spent, and his mind was too tired to think anymore. He wrapped his arms around the pillow, pulling it tight against himself. He fell asleep wishing that it smelled like Bulma.

  
Vegeta slept deeply, dreamt vividly and woke up with a raging erection and a demanding famine waging war in his stomach. The wound on his back had healed enough not to draw his attention to it, his muscles were less sore than the day before. It was his mind that remained fuddled. He wanted, rather desperately, to roll over and pull the willing, warm Woman against him so he could bury his sexual frustration inside her. This was one Saiyan side effect that was incredibly inconvenient when one was trapped alone with it in space.

  
_Can we have yet more reasons to hate bloody space?_

  
His tail had wrapped itself around his waist in his sleep, holding the morning wood up against his stomach. It simply wasn’t something Vegeta was prepared to deal with. He wanted Bulma. The heat of her body, her screams when she called out to him, her fragile limbs. The colour of her hair. The scent she gave off when she wanted him. The feeling of her hands in his hair while he took her…

  
_This isn’t helping._

  
Vegeta got up and went to the personal to perform his morning routine, ignoring his cock until it gave up and relaxed due to inattention. He ate again. Trying to be healthy, he heated a conglomeration of vegetables, which was not satisfying but made him feel as though Panchi would have approved, which for some idiotic reason he didn’t spend too much time bothering with, pleased him.

  
Vegeta went back to main room in the GR and spent hours letting the bots abuse him. He lost himself in the timelessness of battle; firing blast after blast with the intension of training himself to resist and either reflect or dodge his own attacks. The bots fired at him but Vegeta was gentle with them. The Woman was not there to fix them if he destroyed them and there were only a finite amount of extras stored in the cargo hold of the ship.

  
_I need to find something stronger to fight. Something worse._

  
Vegeta sat down in the pilot’s chair. The GR was a space craft and Bulma had given it all the perks that such a thing would need. Without her in his life as a physical distraction, Vegeta had progressed a great deal. He knew that. And it wasn’t enough. He knew that too. Not nearly enough.  
I have to protect her. I have to protect the baby inside her. Her planet. My planet. My Woman.  
He needed to find a planet to land on. The bots were great, but they limited him with the perimeters of their programming and without anyone to fix them when he fought, Vegeta was concerned about running out of bots. And fuel. That was also a problem. The ships fuel cells were not infinite. He needed to keep enough in reserve to get home. To get back to Bulma.

  
The man watched the flashing screens, trying to find a habitable planet within range. It took hours. Bored out of his mind, Vegeta started creating ki balls and bouncing them in the palm of his hand. He made small ones, throwing them from one hand into the other. He almost missed the beeping red light on the console when it lit up. The navigation system had found a planet with an atmosphere he could live in.

Vegeta closed his fist around the glowing blue ball he’d been absently playing with and leaned forward to look at the view screen. 

  
“Zoom in.”

  
The screen obeyed and gave him a rather ugly shot of a rocky planet with two distant stars. It looked like a cold, awful version of Hell. Dark and naked, the planet had no life upon it that he could see. The temperature was 2 C*, which was quite cold to a Saiyan, but not a deal breaker. Training in the cold was not something that he had taken much time to do. The oxygen level was below 16%, so that would make it hard for him. Earth had ample oxygen; he had been spoiled by it. The O2 content of his home world, Vegetasei, was even higher. Though his time spent training under water should give him an edge in low O2.

_Good enough._

  
Vegeta entered the commands that would take him and the ship to the planet and then sat back to wait. According to the computer it would take a little over 30 hours to reach the planet. Vegeta wished that he had a pod, like the ones he’d used in his days with the Freeza Force so he could sleep. That not being an option the Prince went to the small space reserved for entertainment. It was basically just a two-seat couch before a screen but without anything more interesting, he thought to give it a try.  
Bulma had linked his tablet to the screen. With a tap, the violin music switched from it to the speakers built into either side of the TV screen. Vegeta sorted through the store of movies he had saved in his tablet and settled on one of his favourites. ‘Rush Hour 2’ wasn’t the best martial arts movie in the world but the humour made him laugh.   
Feeling a little stupid, Vegeta went to his bed and got one of the pillows. He just wanted something to hold.  
>_>_>_

  
The computer sent a ship wide notification when the planet came into close view. It was a disaster of a world. Nothing but rocks and darkness, a cold waste land where no one and nothing would ever want to live. He found he disliked the idea of demolishing a world with innocent life forms trying to inhabit it. He was getting soft.

  
_Perfect._

  
Vegeta gave the commands to the ship that would make the autopilot land and went to the sleeping room to put his full armour on. The Woman had given him several sets of it. It felt good to have it back on. Vegeta wrapped his tail around his waist and stood in front of the door to the air lock, ready to face the desolate planet before him. 

  
It was exactly that. Desolate.

  
The Saiyan Prince gulped for air. The low oxygen level on this planet was painful to deal with; it made his lungs burn. But Vegeta closed his eyes and controlled his breathing, making his heart slow down. The gravity on planet ‘Crap Lousy’ was not too much different from that of Earth. His body a little heavier, but it was nothing compared to the ability of the GR. 

  
Nothing was alive. The wind blew through his hair and Vegeta could detect not one scent from a living thing. The landscape was a wasteland. Mountains and flat spaces, dust and rubble and all of it dead. 

  
Standing in front of the ship, Vegeta held out his right hand. The white glove shone in the bizarre light of the double stars; his fingers spread wide. A small light that he developed got bigger, until it was roughly the size of a school bus. It blew the rock formation a ways in front of him to pebbles. Vegeta already knew this world was going to suffer from his presence. But somehow, he didn’t think that he was the worst thing that had ever happened to it.   
Days went by. Vegeta trained until his body couldn’t take anymore. The absence of oxygen was painful, his lungs seared with the need to breathe. But he pushed himself to the limits of what his body could handle, training until he was so tired that he could barely move. He only stopped when it was a choice between falling asleep on the bare rocks or going back to the GR. 

  
He would drag himself back to the comfort of the GR and stand in the hot water of the shower until he was clean. Making himself eat was drama. He got rapidly sick of ramen but was unable to make the kind of food he had gotten used to living with Bulma.

  
_Never thought I would miss Panchi… You know a place is thorough bullshit when it makes you wish for that crazy duck._

  
In a moment of inspiration Vegeta dumped an entire frozen chicken into a pot and microwaved it, filling the water with salt. There was a good deal of pasta in the pantry, so he added that. Soup had other things in it. Frozen veg was available. He added that. 

  
The result was a congealed mess that tasted nothing like soup. He tried to eat it the way he would have if Panchi had made it and realized that chickens have more bones than one would have thought. Putting more salt into it did not help. Adding more water didn’t either. Eventually Vegeta took the whole disappointment outside and dumped it on the barren ground, watching it disappear into the crag without an ounce of regret.  
Just for good measure he fired a ki blast that incinerated his cooking failure.

  
_No one must know._

  
Days turned into weeks. He pushed himself to the point that he questioned his own resolve, as well as his mental health and fitness as an eventual parent. The silence was broken only by the music he played on the tablet. The soaring sound of the violin gave him the strength to drag himself out of bed every morning for the next bout of daily torture. 

  
Vegeta didn’t even notice when the lack of O2 stopped bothering him. As his mind numbed into a kind of brainless focus that included only sleeping, eating, bathing and training, his routine changed. No longer, as the time stretched on endlessly, did he bother to put on his armour. The frigid air roughened his skin; which went from chapped to wind burnt to leather. His silken hair seemed to thicken. As though he were adapting to the conditions of ‘Crap Lousy’ with frightening speed, his body changed and Vegeta didn’t notice a thing.

  
He had not bothered to look at his reflection for so long that he’d nearly forgotten he had one. When he returned from the surface of the planet the Saiyan simply plodded on auto pilot to the personal and washed the inevitable grit, blood and whatever other filth from his body. From there he followed his half-conscious mind to the kitchen and used his own ki to char some meat and a pile of veg, eating mechanically without really tasting anything. He would later reflect that this was most definitely for the best. He made certain to wash the few implements he used, drank as much water as he could hold and fell into his bed. He was flat out in moments.   
The only vacation he had from this punishing treatment of himself were his dreams and he preferred to forget them as soon as he woke up.   
>_>_>_

  
Vegeta was high in the thin atmosphere on yet another dateless day. He had decided to work on improving his speed, flying around the ball of dead rock at his top velocity. The frozen air encased him in a thin layer of ice that, contrary to logic, burned like something hot. He pushed faster, drawing both arms out in front of him with his bare hands fisted to protect his face from the tearing wind that ripped at his skin and his hair. He stretched out in the air, lengthening his hard body to its fullest height and focused his mind on the ever moving horizon. 

  
It was painful. He could barely see through the tears the wind dragged out of his black eyes but it barely mattered; there was nothing so high up to hit. A cone began to form a few feet in front of his fists, distorting the air.

  
_Faster!_

  
The wind was deafening. In a moment of inspiration, Vegeta wrapped his tail around his head to cover his ears and found that gave instant relief and warmth.

  
_Faster!_

  
He pushed even harder. His ki rose inside him, blooming from the core of his tortured body. He felt it spread through his veins and muscles, heat his bones until it reached the surface of his skin. The golden aura rippled over Vegeta. It covered him from his hands to his feet, a mixture of shield and warm cocoon. A vicious smile spread across his ravaged face for the first time in weeks.

  
_Fuck YES! Faster!_

  
The distortion of air in front of the Prince broke with a crack that could have been heard on the other side of the planet and he shot forward almost faster than it would have possible to see. It was a feeling that sent shockwaves through him of fierce pleasure and his aura intensified. The screaming wind not longer hurt and the cold died away in the blazing fury of Saiyan strength.

  
Never had he felt this kind of power coursing through him, nor the focus and insane glee that came with it. It felt so good! 

  
Vegeta kept it up for hours, making more laps than he bothered to count around the planet, drawing on reserves of energy he didn’t know were stored inside him. Vortexes ruined the atmosphere around the lightening bolt of his body, giving him a reason to laugh out loud. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.  
At last the Prince felt his energy starting to decrease. He’d reached his limit, finally and found that he was not disappointed in the least. This was the most progress he’d made in a one day in all the time he’d spend on this kami forsaken pit of Hell. In his manic drive to push himself, Vegeta had lost his bearings. He’d had to orient himself to find his ship again. Annoying.

  
Without slowing, he dropped his altitude so that he could make out any landmarks that might give him an idea of where exactly he was, but the planet was so monotonously the same that nothing looked remotely familiar. There were no features that stood out anywhere at all.

  
This would have irritated the Prince incredibly if he had not been so high with the feeling of the new power level he’d just reached. He dropped lower, speeding over the rubble and pebbles and dust so fast that they rose, swept up in his wake. That distracted Vegeta slightly and he turned his head to look behind him to take in the effect. 

  
He’d never seen anything like it.

  
_Amazing…_

  
When Vegeta turned back to face front he found the ship. Right in front of him. 

  
At the speed he was going he would rip through the vessel as though it were made out of tissue paper. His mind slowed down and his eyes went wide. If that happened, the best he could hope for would be that the impact and subsequent explosion killed him. That precious ship was his only way off this rock.

  
_My only way back to Earth. Back to the child. Back to my Bulma._

  
It was not a hard decision to make. Vegeta was going far to fast to stop and if he’d tried to swerve upward the curve would still cause him to clip the ship. He did the only other thing he could think of. 

  
Vegeta twisted to the side and shot past the great vessel close enough that it rocked on it’s supports. He barely had time to slow at all, rolling his body into a protective ball of muscle and glowing ki before he slammed with the force of an earthquake into the uneven surface of the planet.  
Vegeta hit so hard that he left a furrow 30 feet deep and a mile long, throwing hot rock and dust high in the lead sky. The shockwave of the blast hit the ship like the remains of a bomb, causing it to titter dangerous for the second time in as many seconds. 

  
The ship settled on its feet long before the cloud of debris the prince vanished into had settled. When it did the young man was nowhere to be seen.  
>_>_>_

  
Vegeta came to in darkness. For a few long seconds he stayed still, recalling what had just happened and where he was.   
Speeding through the air, too close to the surface…The ship…The ground…

  
_Right._

  
He spit out a mouthful of grit. Vegeta was mostly buried under the mess his impact had made but it was a disturbingly simple thing to draw his ki into his core and then release it in a blast wave that blew all the rubble into out of the oblong crater he was currently in.   
Vegeta had come to rest still wrapped in the ball he’d used to try and protect himself. He unfurled himself very slowly, searching for broken bones, missing limbs or some other heinous injury that would knock him out from the pain. Bit by bit the Prince stood up, trembling slightly and certainly in a fair amount of discomfort, but shockingly intact.   
Confused, Vegeta tried to rise and found that he lacked the power to fly. Apparently, the shield and then the blast he’d used to free himself had used what remained of his energy. He was outstandingly exhausted, physically, but did not feel terrible.   
He carefully climbed out of the furrow, amazed at how long it was.

  
_That has to be a record._

  
Walking slowly back toward the ship, he tried to wrap his head around how he could have caused such damage and stayed intact. Was it possible that his ki, wrapped around him, could have the power to protect him from such force?

  
_I should be broken. I should be fucking dead._

  
He made his way into the ship, not moving with his usual grace or speed but moving none-the-less and for that he was grateful.  
>_>_>_

  
In the personal the Prince took the first close look at himself that he’d had in a long time. Even he didn’t know how long it had been; probably months. He was horrified, fascinated and slightly afraid of what he saw reflected in the full length mirror.

  
Vegeta’s mind was completely clear and awake. The stupor he’d let himself fall into had shaken itself loose, falling away like the smattering of left over planet that collected at his feet when he shook out his hair, staring at the himself.

  
Vegeta’s upright crown of black hair had lost all of its luster. It stood in course bristles, thick and shaggy like the mane of a shorn horse. The peak on his forehead was deeper than before, sharper. His normally winged brows were more severe. There was an added fold of skin between them that gave him an angry expression he hadn’t had before; for all that he’d spent most of his time pissed off. 

  
Most shocking, the lower half of his face was covered in short, rough hairs. Vegeta ran a hand over this growth and actually shuddered. He knew Saiyans could grow beards, his own father had been possessed of one but never in his life had his body shown the slightest inclination to grow one. He didn’t like it at all; it felt like some kind of contamination. Revolted, Vegeta instantly searched every inch of his skin for anymore of the alien hair. The thin black line leading down from his navel and the dark triangle between his legs were still there but he, blessedly, found nothing else.

  
Peering at himself closely, Vegeta saw that his entire body looked different from the way he remembered. His skin was darker and somehow closer to the ridged musculature underneath it. He looked like he had been baked in the hot sun, though the planet he was on had neither anything hot nor a bright sun. He was larger, bulkier. Vegeta made fists and frowned at the size and sharpness of the knuckles- they didn’t look like his hands.

  
No longer smooth, for all that it was extensively scarred, his entire skin felt like water proof leather; it didn’t feel like it belonged to him either. There were new scars crossing over old ones, marks of the continuous damage he’d done himself since landing in Hell. He examined the blooming bruises and clotted gouges from his meeting with the granite surface an hour ago, disregarding most as unimportant. Apparently, his hardened skin was tough enough to take that kind abuse when also shielded by an aura of ki.   
Not certain exactly how to feel about what he saw, Vegeta decided not to feel anything until after he’d had time to wash and tend to himself. 

  
_Gods, what I wouldn’t give for the great hot tub in Bulma’s chambers…For my Bulma. Just for the touch of her hands..._

  
He took a deep breath against the punch in the stomach that came with thinking of sitting in the hot water with her. Of the first time she’d tended to him in her bathing chamber. It took the man several minutes before he was able to drag himself out of the memories, a few more before he could push the hole that opened up in his soul far enough away to breath normally again.

  
Vegeta stayed in the shower for a very long time. He’d dug out all the ‘luxuries’ that Bulma had packed into the ship for him, though he’d told her that he would never have use for any of them. What good were ridiculous things like lotions and scented soaps and hair potions in space?

  
The creamy, sandalwood scented soap did feel incredibly soothing on his rough and abraded skin; so much so that he washed himself with it three times. Vegeta didn’t like the way his hair felt in his hands, which tempted him to ignore it completely. But he knew that the treatments the Woman had subjected him to in her bathing chamber had made his mane softer, so he gritted his teeth and used the goop the way she’d shown him. It had little or no immediate effect but maybe over time…

  
There was the problem of the disgusting facial hair to deal with and for that Vegeta had no answer. With or without any kind of example, Vegeta (after a very uncertain deliberation) decided to try to rid himself of it the same way that Bulma rid herself of the hair under her arms. It took some searching, but he found a mounted razor with four blades. This didn’t have too much of an effect until he slathered his face with the creamy soap and even then, the thing didn’t seem to have the strength needed to cut the course hair completely off. No matter how many times he ran it over his cheeks, the feeling of a more feral version of Scratch’s tongue remained. 

  
_It’s like I have started to turn into an Oozaru…_  
>_>_>_

  
Vegeta slapped a few self-adhesive bandages over the worst of his newest wounds, barely able to stay standing at that point. He was so drained. Again, came the utterly miserable choice between the final two things his Saiyan anatomy screamed for after being injured. 

  
_Food or sleep._

  
It took quite a lot of willpower to force himself into the kitchen and rip a large joint off one of the frozen carcasses stowed in the freezing unit. He had no patience to wait for the meat to cook in the microwave. Vegeta threw the hunk in the sink and held out his palms. A tiny smile flitted across his handsome face when he mustered only enough ki to thaw the thing. There just wasn’t enough to cook it.

  
_Fuck it._

  
He slumped down to the floor of the small space and with his head hanging between his knees, ate his dinner raw. By the time his stomach was satisfied, the Prince could no longer open his eyes at all. Very, very grateful that there was no one to see him, Vegeta crawled to his bed by memory and rolled up onto it. He was asleep before he made it to the pillows.

  
Still reluctant to use the Senzu, Vegeta slept for most of the next two ‘days’. He called them days only for the sake of giving some semblance of importance to the passage of time. He knew that he had been spending longer and longer periods training and by his estimation was now on something like a 46 hour cycle. He counted ‘days’ as the period from one long sleep to the next. 

  
He woke up several times during the two days to take care of necessaries, happily finding his ki restored enough to cook his meat, at least. Other than that, the Prince slept, deep and dreamless, healing.

  
Vegeta knew he was healed when he woke up from the third cycle of sleep. He stretched his limbs, groaning at the tightness and the power that surged through his body as he moved it. He had indeed received the Zenkai boost and could feel it in every fiber.

  
_Fuck yes! FUCK YES_!

  
Vegeta half leapt, half flew out of his bed, his body under perfect control. He was more than eager to get back out and see how much stronger he was-  
Until he reached up to push his heavy forelock out of his eyes and felt the awful texture of his hair. He remembered. One hand rubbed over his stubble and he made a sickened face at the sandpaper feeling. 

  
The Prince was, secretly, a vain young man. He’d taken a very great deal of pleasure in the way that his Bulma had worshipped his body. He loved the heated feeling she gave him when she sat back to simply look at him. In the way she made him feel when she touched him.

  
_She will not want to touch this. She’ll never call this ‘Beautiful’ with that look in her blue eyes_.

  
Vegeta made a detour to the personal and washed himself with her potions again. He took the time to cover himself in the lotion she put on his skin to soften the scar tissue. He attacked his hair with the metal toothed comb she often used on him. When she did it, it was an experience he always wanted to continue. When he did it, he felt the urge to rip it out as much as untangle it.

  
However, the Prince refused to let such a petty thing ruin the enthusiasm he felt. It was like a gift to feel something besides the empty, soulless nothing that he’d been living in. He wanted to keep the excitement.

  
He also took the time to dress in a full set of new armour. Feeling more himself than he had in ages, Vegeta went out and took to the sky. He spent a quite enjoyable time, at a great distance from his ship, blowing canyons into the planet he had come to hate. His ki came so effortlessly. The power that flowed through him was a form of bliss.   
>_>_>_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know what you want. Wait for chapter 6.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And it hurts..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am terrible with these. I hate making my Prince suffer. This is really dark. If depression is a thing for you, don't continue. I've felt it, so I wrote it the way it is for me. You'll want to reach out and just touch his face.

**CHAPTER 2**

  
Over the course of the next weeks Vegeta trained longer and harder than ever before. And yet…

  
Slowly his hope and the raging joy began to ebb. Every time he reached higher and didn’t Ascend another tiny part of his spirit wilted. He could feel it, so close. And the transformation he yearned for remained absent. 

  
Vegeta was starting to die inside. He knew in his heart he would never return to Earth without having achieved Ascension, his pride and his promise would not allow that. He would fly his ship into a star before he would do that. And he desperately wanted to return to Earth. He could not have one without the other and every time he returned to the ship, failure killed a little more of his will to live.   
>_>_>_

  
A day came that Vegeta couldn’t find the will to get up at all. He hadn’t eaten for more than a day and hadn’t trained the day before or the day before that at all. He’d simply slumped down in front of the entertainment center and let the monitor play whatever was in the queue until he’d been tired enough to slink back to his bed. He’d done the same thing the next day, not even bothering to eat. He just didn’t care and found that if he waited long enough the feeling of hunger would fade away like everything else that used to matter.

  
Vegeta had no experience with depression. He had no one to talk to. No one to pull him out of the darkness. Alone and silent he stopped functioning. He laid in his bed, face buried in the pillow and let the belief that he was worthless swallow him. It sucked at his mind and body, leaving both hallow and as desolate as the shit hole planet he had chosen to give up and die on. 

  
He let thoughts of Kakarot go. Knowing he would never achieve the level the third-class warrior already had sapped his strength. It was not in his nature to fail and he simply didn’t know how to handle it. 

  
He let thoughts of Bulma and his child go. Vegeta would not subject his chosen Woman to a mate that could not keep his promise and protect her. If he were not to return, he believed Bulma would eventually find another mate, one worthy of her. Vegeta would not humiliate his unborn son with the knowledge that his sire was a weak and pointless pretender. The child would be a prince in his own right. Better for him to believe that his father died in space than to know the truth and have to live with the reticule.   
Vegeta would never have believed the truth even if anyone had been there to give it to him. The great pride of the Prince of all Saiyans could never have born the fact that Kakarot had such respect for him that he never thought of the only of his own kind as being beneath him in any way. Unlike Vegeta, Kakarot did not judge people on power but on merit. Vegeta would never have accepted that.

  
As man he would never have believed that his mate would have loved him just as much whether he ever Ascended or not. Impossible for him to understand that such a Woman would actually choose him and that it didn’t matter to her if he never fought again. Vegeta felt that he had no worth without his strength, nothing would ever change that. He loved Bulma too deeply to bring such shame to her.

  
There was nothing in the universe that could possibly convince him that any son would want a father unable to be an example to live up to. His own father had been that for the young Prince. Right up until the day he’d broken his son’s heart and sold him into slavery to the Lizard to live a life of loneliness and pain, violence and servitude. King Vegeta hadn’t been strong enough to protect the Prince or their planet and Vegeta had hated him for that. He would rather not exist than endure that hatred from his own son.   
Exactly the same as my own father. Better off dead…  
>_>_>_

Vegeta lost track of time. He stopped moving all together. His quick silver mind closed itself off to every sensation but the misery consuming it. He no longer felt thirst. There was no hunger. His otherworldly strength was all that stood between him and death and he resented that. When he had any coherent thoughts at all he wished for nothing in the universe than more oblivion. He laid perfectly still, waiting. The dark voices in his mind whispered to him incessantly; daemons that gave him no peace. There were not many ways for a Saiyan to end his own life with any degree of certainty. But, they murmured to him, if you stay where you are, Prince, you will fade into nothingness and your pain will end. 

  
He wanted that. For it to end. To fade into the black of space and feel nothing. Be nothing.

  
Nothing. There is nothing…

  
But there was. There was something and it was pulling at the corner of his mind, like a splinter in his brain. Eyes closed, Vegeta tried to shut it out. Whatever it was didn’t matter. It would fade away with everything else if he waited long enough. 

  
**“Vegeta!”**

  
He heard his name. 

  
**“Proximity alert! Collision is imminent!”**

  
It was Bulma’s voice. That beloved voice. Perhaps there was some mercy in the universe even for a creature such as him. Her words meant nothing to him. But hearing it was enough to make him open his eyes. 

  
**“Take evasive action! 18 minutes to impact!”**

  
He let a smile curve his dry lips. He was something close to happy that the thing he got to heard before he died was her voice one last time.

  
**“Vegeta!”**

  
She was louder this time. More insistent. Just like the tone she used when she was scolding him for something or trying to get his attention. He would have laughed if he could have forced the sound out. He’d missed her so very much. He silently thanked whatever kind god had sent him this final gift.

  
 **“Proximity alert! Collision is imminent!**

  
Vegeta just lay there listening to her voice, hoping she would speak again when something in his mind turned over.

  
**“Take evasive action! 17 minutes to impact!”**

  
_What? What was she saying?_

  
With incredible effort the weakened Prince pushed himself into a sitting position. He was having trouble clearing his vision after not using it for so long but there was nothing wrong with his alien hearing. 

  
**“Vegeta!”**

  
She was yelling at him now and her voice rang around the ship with an authority he could not ignore. Vegeta shook as he maneuvered his body into standing and zeroed in on the direction in which his mate called to him. 

  
He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes and his vision cleared. He could see Bulma.  
  
 _My beautiful Bulma_.

**Proximity alert! Collision is imminent!”**

  
She was on the huge view screen in the front of the ship’s cockpit. He stared at her. Her blue eyes flaring and her face as smooth and delicate as always but there was an intensity in her expression, and it drew him forward on shivering legs. 

  
**“Take evasive action! 16 minutes to impact!”**

  
_What the fuck?_

  
Vegeta made it to the console at the pilots’ station and looked down at the display. There was something on the radar that made his eyes go wide. There was something coming toward the planet, towards the ship and it was enormous. He looked back at the screen, dazed. He couldn’t think straight.

  
**“VEGETA!!”**

  
Bulma screamed this time and Vegeta staggered, holding the panel to keep himself upright. The dim lights of the interior of the ship flipped into a bright red and there were flashing yellow LED lights on the panel. Before she could scream at him again, Vegeta hit the contact nearest to his hand.

  
Bulma vanished for a moment and was then replaced by another recording of her. She was standing on the ship. He actually looked around the bridge as though she could have magically appeared. But she was speaking. This time her voice was tight and calm and she seemed to look out of the screen straight at him.

  
“Vegeta, the ship has only minimal defense capability. This alarm means that you are on planet and that there is not time for the start up sequence to complete before the threat will arrive,” Bulma said with a deadly stillness, he could see the fear she’d felt at the having to make such a recording, though she hid it well.  
“Turn the external shields to maximum and deploy the battle bots. They have been programmed to protect the ship if this alarm sounds. Send out the emergency beacon! Now!” she went on, coming closer to the screen.  
God’s, I love you…  
“The beacon will send a signal to Earth so I can find you if the ship is disabled. Wherever you are I will find you!” She took a breath and came closer.  
“Whatever the danger is, protect yourself at all costs, Vegeta. Protect yourself and come home to me! I don’t care about anything else, I just have to have you back! Do you understand?”

  
Vegeta’s eyes filled with stinging burning tears. She burned a hole through the black death that filled him and set him on fire. 

  
**“Protect yourself, my Prince. I love you! We love you!** ”  
>_>_>_

  
The message cut out and the other version of Bulma reappeared, screaming at the top of her lovely lungs. 

  
**“TAKE EVASIVE ACTION!! 12 MINUTES TO IMPACT”**

  
The Prince was no longer listening. He found the regulator for the external shields and cranked it up as high as it would go. The ship made a whirring sound that wound itself up into a throbbing hum that was actually rather reassuring. He stumbled over to the control panel for the GR portion of the ship, dismayed and horrified at how weak he was. His midsection slammed into the panel, knocking the wind out of him but he ignored it. He hit the contacts that would release the battle bots, all of them. They were already active, red and blue lights flashing. That meant they were going out at full power.

  
He hit the next contact that would open the hatch and then was forced to duck as the squadron of Bulma’s robots sped out in the gloomy light of the shittiest planet in the galaxy.

  
Vegeta was struggling to draw breath by the time he reached the sleeping chamber. Behind him Bulma was screaming, **“9 MINUTES TO IMPACT!!”** Vegeta bent down and started throwing things out of the built-in cupboard beside the putrid, messed bed. He found what he wanted and opened the little leather pouch. The five beans he’d brought with him were there and he nearly cried over never having given in and taking one. Until now.

  
Vegeta had never been so weak without being injured before. He was shaking and he couldn’t get enough air, his legs were melting rubber and his arms were nearly useless. Impulse drove him and he tipped two of the small green beans into his mouth. Chewing as best he could with no saliva, he staggered to the closet and pulled out his armour.

  
**“8 MINUTES TO IMPACT!!!”**

  
Vegeta could not swallow the dry, bitter little bean. He dragged his armour with him into the bathroom, cursing and filled his mouth with water from the tap. The moment the Senzu hit his stomach it began its work. He felt intense heat and gasped, doubling over in pain. Vegeta felt a scream torn from his throat, such was the pain that Korin’s magic caused as it repaired the damage he had done to himself. It ripped him apart and put him back together. By the time Vegeta was able to stand straight again, he was fully himself.

  
In mere moments he was running back to the hatch, fastening his breastplate with a war cry on his lips as he launched himself into the sky. He saw what he was looking for instantly. A shape so big it could fill a continent streaking through space at unbelievable speed; it defied understanding.  
Vegeta wracked his mind for a strategy. The dreaded Destroyer of Planets knew he could blow the thing into atoms. He could have done that before he’d even gone to Earth, had done so many times. But never when he himself was on a planet. He knew from experience that if he tried that from his current position the backlash from the explosion would, at the very least strip the fucking shit stain he was trying to protect of it’s atmosphere and most of the land mass in this side of the planet. Neither he nor the ship would survive that. 

  
_Some other way…Has to be!_

  
Vegeta rose higher, to the limit of where he could breathe. The bots spread out below him in attack formation, allies in this battle. He closed his eyes. Inside his body his ki flared and he felt it explode outward in a riot that pushed the bots back a ways. 

  
He pulled harder on himself, his power covering him as it had before. Vegeta knew when he had reached the limit of what he possessed. He had a moment of panic when he doubted himself, the daemons murmuring in his mind again. Telling him to stop. To let the comet, or whatever the hell it was, come and give him his oblivion. It would be instant and there would be no more pain, no more…No more.

  
Rage consumed him and Vegeta pulled both his gloved hands back along side his head, one palm on the back of the opposite hand. He drew his massive legs up, creating a harsh ball of light that burned like a magnesium fire. He put all his anger into the Gallick Gun, all the misery. It drew past the point where he could hold onto it and still he poured power into the attack. 

  
The world ender was blotting out the rest of the sky when Vegeta loosed the monstrous beam right into its face. It hit with the force of all the hatred he’d kept in his soul since the age of six. It was his father. It was Freeza. It was finding out that his birthright was destroyed with his planet. It was seeing Kakarot and the boy from the future turn Super Saiyan in front of him while he was powerless to achieve what they had. 

  
The light blinded Vegeta and still it came. It burned through the fingers of his gloves. His hair singed and yet still, it came. 

  
The enemy from space fractured. It split into two roughly equal pieces, the closer of the two taking the full force of the blast. The sustained attack drilled into the rock, shattering it and incinerating a good portion of it. The beam then fired through the debris and slammed into the huge mountain range behind it, the force pushing the thing back out into space. Chunks flew off but the thing itself did not fracture apart. 

  
When Vegeta let his smoking hands fall he was dumbstruck by what he saw. The bulk of the thing sent to kill him was back out in space and had slowed but it was also caught in the gravity of the planet. It was still coming. And now it was accompanied by an army of its own, compromised of the death throes of its’ other half.

  
His own blast had pushed him backward and the bots were spiraling all him around in crazy patterns firing their lasers at the incoming debris. Vegeta saw that quite a lot of these wayward pieces were headed straight toward his very vulnerable ship. Most of which were far larger and traveling faster than the shields could handle. 

  
Vegeta nearly panicked. He did not think he had enough ki left in his body for another attack like the Gallick Gun he had just created. Nor did he have enough time to let himself charge back up. His faithful little bots were diligently trying to destroy the remnants falling like death rain towards their only way home, but they were never meant to take out many times super sonic space rock and though they had some success with the smaller pieces, they had nearly no effect on the larger ones.

  
Vegeta flipped over in mid-air and flashed like lightening toward the ship. He took position several thousand feet above it and began sending ki blasts in every direction. He took out hundreds of the damned meteorites and then hundreds more. The monstrous one was still coming, and he knew he was running out of energy. In an attempt to conserve what he had left, Vegeta began to attack them physically. His battle-hardened fists slammed into them, reducing them to falling pebbles that slid off the ships shields or he kicked them away so that they crashed harmlessly into the rock surface of the nameless planet.

  
Vegeta was panting as the battle raged on and on without so much as a moments respite. Most of his bots were gone, having either lost power or been taken out by debris too large for them to handle. Those brave little bots sacrificed themselves despite their AI programming for self-preservation and that made Vegeta angry. He valued bravery. He’d spent countless hours with the inventions created by his mate, and he was rather fond of them in his way. Possessive. This fucking asshole rock was not only trying to take his ship and his life, but it also had taken the closest things he had for company in space until they returned to Earth. It was a stupid motivation and the Prince knew it but he also thought beggars had no reason to be choosers. 

  
The thought of returning to the Earth ran through his head repeatedly as he used his clenched hands to pulverize one of the biggest falling chunks. Something was wrong.   
In gut wrenching horror, Vegeta turned to look at the ship. He’d forgotten two things in his hurry and stupidity. He had tossed the Senzu pouch back into the drawer. And he had not deployed the beacon.

  
He turned back to look at the nightmare closing in on him, picking up velocity. He had to do something but if he went back into the ship there was a very good chance that it would be compromised by one of the falling missiles. Stunned by his lack of intelligence, Vegeta decided that it would be safer to deploy the beacon and he turned to hurtle back to the open hatch.

  
A very large projectile struck him right at the spot on his lower back where his tail emerged as he turned in the air. The speed and force caught the Prince and pinned him; he hit the ground with the meteorite on top of him. His tail was crushed in the violent impact, driving all motor control and sanity out of Vegeta. There was no part of his exposed body more vulnerable and even with all his training an injury like that rendered him nearly unconscious with the mind-bending agony.   
Vegeta couldn’t breathe. He was being suffocated by the weight on his back. Vegeta planted his hands on the hard, freezing ground and pushed. Several tons of stone lifted and finally rolled off his abused body. He had nothing left. Vegeta let his arms give out and he fell back to the gritty, jagged cradle of his grave.  
>_>_>_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wait for it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Shining Golden God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any typing errors in this chapter, there is something wrong with the net and I can't import it directly from my computer. I had to try to format it in the post box, so there might be problems. I did my best.

**CHAPTER 3**

The sound of the end of his life began to roar in his ears. Vegeta would not die with his face in the darkness. He lifted his head and looked up into the night sky. The nightmare was coming. It would only be a few more minutes and he would be done with this life. Done with being a thing that was never good enough for anything worthwhile. But he would watch it come for him and when it did, stare Death in the face.

  
Tears came to his eyes along with the memories of his time on Earth. Close, warm nights spent in the arms of the human woman who loved him. Of grapes and secrets and steaming bathing chambers. He didn’t wipe the wetness away, letting it drip down his pointed chin. He felt again the restraint of silken cords on his wrists, kisses that she had let him press into her white skin and the rich taste of her blood from the side of her hot neck. Little fists pulling his hair while she begged him to suck harder. Watching her sleep, curled into him with all the trust she gave to no one else. Hearing her say she loved him.

  
Vegeta balled up his fists and beat cracks into the ground.

  
“WHY?” he screamed again and again. Why was everything he’d ever dared to care about taken away from him? But there was no answer. And there was no rage. No anger.   
“WHY?” Vegeta screamed again, the sound tearing his throat. All he felt was loss and sadness for something that could have been magnificent. Taken from him by his own insane pride and a lifeless destroyer from the black depths of space. The stone under his fists vanished into mist as he beat the meaninglessness of everything into it.  
The roar was shaking the ground and he could feel the heat gathered by something so gigantic coming through even an atmosphere such as this. He should have stayed on the incomparable blue planet with his incomparable blue haired mate. He should have welcomed his death there with her.

  
Bulma would never know that he hadn’t abandoned her and their child. She wouldn’t blame Vegeta, she would turn her betrayal inward. She would suffer alone as she always did. She would be alone when the androids came with only Kakarot to defend her and their son.  
Vegeta did not realize that he had risen to one knee until he looked up again and rose all the way to step toward the ELE.   
He saw Kakarot in his mind, fighting the androids alone. The only other Saiyan would do exactly that and he would fight until his dying breath for his planet and the people on it. He would do because he loved them.

_I love them. Both._

  
Vegeta felt it before he recognized what it was. He was running when his aura flared out over his ravaged body. He stopped between the meteorite and the ship, burning like a torch in the dull glow of the molten rock. Inside him the ki seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. He felt like it might pour out of his mouth if he opened it, like it was beating against the inside of his skin trying to escape. He focused, eyes narrowed and dry. His boots sunk into the bare stone while smaller ones lifted into the air around him in defiance of both gravity and the percussion wave coming from his enemy. Vegeta lifted his hands and held them out at arms length, forcing all his power into the palms of his open hands. This time it was different, the power came at his call, growing into a blast so bright and concentrated it resembled a small star.  
Vegeta could not blow the damned thing up this time. He would have to obliterate it. If he and his ship were to survive, he would have to remove it from existence. It was that simple and that absolute. He would win or this random act of destruction would but one of them was going to die.

  
_Right here. Right now._

  
Vegeta let it go, holding his ground against the rage of his own power. The broad pillar of charged light hit the incoming rock and wrapped around the forward face of the thing. It spread out over the surface until he couldn’t see it anymore but he could feel the awesome pressure of it pushing down on him. 

  
_MORE! I need more than this_!

  
Muscles tore and his lungs were crushed under the weight. His booted feet sunk deeper into the surface of the planet making Vegeta take a shaking step out of the crater, screaming his battle cry. The mighty mass of the meteorite was literally splitting him apart by what it cost him to hold the beam, his arms near to dislocating. Vegeta bowed his head, searching his soul for more. He was forced to one knee.   
Behind his closed eyes he saw Bulma on the view screen in the ship. He heard her voice pleading with him to protect himself. To return to her. She had reached out across space and found him in his moment of final need to show her love. She demanded that he come back to her. 

  
**“I love you! We love you!”**

  
The Prince lifted his head. 

  
_I am coming home, Woman_!

  
Vegeta exploded in a super nova of golden fire. The midnight of his eyes shattered into a crystal blue. His hair stood on end, shimmering into a bright yellow peak. He stood straight and tall a moment before his feet left the ground completely. The beam folded around the doomed ball of iron and momentum until it was completely engulfed in pure ki energy.

  
“DIE!” Vegeta screamed to the sky, the power of a true Super Saiyan Prince broke over and around the harbinger. Molecular bonds cracked and came apart in the face of his fury. Atoms flew in a million directions at the command of the double timbre in his voice. Vegeta squeezed his fists together until his hands slammed into one another with a flash of light bright enough to be seen from several million miles away.   
>_>_>_

When the light finally died away Vegeta was alone in the air, the fire around him burning like the corona of the Earths’ yellow sun. There was nothing left of the great planet killer but a spattering of fine dust that settled silently on the ground around him. Slowly, he lowered his arms to his sides, eyes closed and his head tilted back. The Prince took a very deep breath, held it for a long time and then let it out before he moved again.   
This was what it felt like. This was the culmination of all his suffering and training and the triumph was indescribable. He opened his aqua eyes and looked down at his hands, at the aura that had made itself a part of him. '

  
**_Ascension._ **

  
Vegeta lowered himself to the ground. His body felt so light as he walked along the ruined ground, so strong that he wondered how he ever felt powerful before in his life. This was something so new and different it was like being reborn. He had perfect control over his body, over the pulsing ki pumping through him. His mind was changed, moving slower and yet thinking faster. He could see further and in telephotographic detail that even a Saiyan wouldn’t be able to believe. Vegeta reached out with his ears, expecting nothing on his lifeless planet but finding sound never the less. A muted ticking that he at once identified. He walked on soundless feet to a pile of rubble.  
Under the mess of silt and stone he found the source of the sound and gently removed the bot from the pile. It was still alive, its’ blue light shining feebly in it’s one eye. The metal was dented, only one of its’ two arms remaining. That was the sound. The little bot had been trying to free itself with its’ twisted and broken pincer.   
When he lifted it the bot struggled and he understood that it was still in defense mode. Loyal and diligent to the end, it was still trying to rise and do its duty.   
He cradled it in his hands, “Enter rest mode.” His voice was deep and soft. The bot trembled slightly in what he imagined was robotic relief and went still, folding its arm against its body as best it could.

  
Vegeta found four more of his metallic allies in what was left of the battle ground. He tenderly took them back to the ship and put them back into their charging cubby. It was, he thought, the least he owed them.

  
The Prince checked the ship from top to bottom, inside and out. He ran diagnostics on the computer system while he went over the outer hull with a close eye looking for any sign of a breach. The ship had been hit, that was evident by the scorch marks on the hull but he could detect no more than dents and none of those serious. Perhaps there was a kami watching over him someplace after all.

  
The computer also detected no damage to the systems. Bulma had indeed built him a marvel of a ship. He turned the shields back to minimum. The alarms had shut themselves off once the sensors determined that there was nothing else falling out of space and trying to kill them all. The Prince stood for a moment staring at the dark screen wishing he knew how to replay the message from his mate. He wanted to see and hear her again. But nothing happened when he hit the contact that had brought her out before the shower.

  
_Doesn’t matter. I’ll see that beloved face again soon enough in personal…_  
>_>_>_

  
Vegeta went back out in the darkness when he was done with the ship. He felt unnaturally calm. He wanted to walk and experience this new form.   
The light from his aura lit his way and Vegeta let his mind wander while he walked. 

  
So much made sense to him now. Kakarot hadn’t turned until his best friend had been brutally and pointlessly murdered by Freeza. It wasn’t in Kakarot’s basic nature to feel rage of hatred. As much as it galled Vegeta to admit, Kakarot was an innocent. His savage Saiyan nature had been lost when he was a very small child by a life altering bonk on the head, leaving him with no part of it but the love of a good fight. He’d never felt true rage until Krillin’s death, and it was that compromising emotion that had brought out the change in him.

  
The young man from the future had suffered in a similar way. His mentor and only friend had been murdered before his eyes by the androids from his timeline. That one also did not have the nature of a native born Saiyan. The swordman was a fierce warrior, Vegeta did not doubt that at all and the most powerful person from his world but he wasn’t inherently angry. For him, like Kakarot, the rage had been his turning point.

  
Vegeta looked at the sky again, wishing he knew in which direction Earth lie. It was the emotions he had learned while on that small blue and green miracle of a world that he’d drawn from tonight. Vegeta was always angry. Rage and hate were old friends that he’d spent almost his entire life getting to know better. Love and loyalty, those were new. And just as powerful in their ability to change a man. Those were the keys to his Ascension. 

  
Impulsively, Vegeta shot into the air. He went high, reminding himself to take stock of his bearings this time and once he was oriented the Prince went supersonic. It was easier than he’d ever imagined it could be. It took no effort; only an act of will. Looking over his shoulder Vegeta saw that he was leaving a golden trail in his wake miles long. Vegeta flew around and around the circumference of the planet just because it felt good and he needed to move. He wasn’t yet ready to give up the Super Saiyan form. In the back of his mind he was afraid he would not be able to find his way to it a second time if he changed. 

  
Finally, the Prince had enough. He flew slower on the way back, letting the wind cool him. The lights of the ship drew him and he landed as lightly as a feather on fresh snow. His body was spent. He could feel it, though it wasn’t the same kind of exhaustion as he’d feel in his natural form.   
The shine of a stone in the glow of his personal fire caught Vegeta’s eye in the mess of remains. He leaned over and picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, iron ferrite if he wasn’t mistaken. Curious, Vegeta wrapped his hand around it and using the unbelievable power on his fist crushed it carefully. He moved it and repeated the motion several times until he had an egg shaped ball of metal. There was a little cruelty in his eyes and in the set of his smile when he tossed the thing into the air and blasted it with a tightly controlled shot of searing ki. He caught it on the down swing.

  
Looking down at the shiny black egg in his palm, Vegeta grinned in a way that would have scared an observer. He looked back at the battle ground for a minute, holding the egg tightly.  
“I win, motherfucker,” he growled low and in the deep double timbre of an Ascended Super Saiyan.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the day after. A little bit of self smut, tasteful I hope, in it's way. The time in space is almost over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I had to format this in the post box, so please forgive any errors. Also, I love my Prince.

**CHAPTER 4**

It was another act of will to let the power leave his body. It came out like a wave of energy carried on a breath. Uncertain what would happen exactly, Vegeta had done this outside the ship. The light faded from around him. He paid close attention to his body. It didn’t feel as though he’d changed shape, but he noticed he was heavier on the soles of his feet and exhausted beyond comprehension. 

  
Walking up the ramp to the hatch, the Prince pulled his forelock down to look at it the midnight tress. As he moved his body registered all the various kinds of damage he’d taken defending himself and his ship. He arched in every joint. His limbs felt like they were fractured. His head pounded. 

  
But it was his tail that nearly made him cry out. It fell away from his waist with a sickening internal crunch. Vegeta grabbed it and held it delicately in both hands. It was broken right at the base, which made walking a nightmare. In this condition he would not be able to sit, lay or do pretty much anything for that matter without terrible pain. This convinced him to take another of the precious Senzu.

  
The little bean truly was magical. Once the burning heat passed, the myriad cuts and bruises were gone. The grinding hunger had fled along with the desert dryness of his throat. His arms and shoulders no longer seemed to be one flinch away from comically falling off and the exposed kneecap of his right leg was no longer a gleaming hole in his skin. Whatever had happened to his head, Vegeta couldn’t even remember, healed. 

  
Senzu did more than even all of that. His energy level shot back up to full power. He’d been tired enough to drop down and sleep in the entrance to the hatch before but that too was gone. He sent a mental gratitude to Korin. It wasn’t normally Vegeta’s way to thank anyone for anything. Princes did not give thanks when provided with their royal dues but the strange, talking cat was getting a fruit basket.

  
Spared the need to sleep or eat, Vegeta went straight to the bathing chamber. He was covered in filth, again.

  
_Really have to find some way around this shit…_

  
He ran a finger over his cheek, and it came away black. The only part of his armour that would be useable in the future was his breast plate. He set it on the floor of the personal, it would need cleaning. The rest of it was in tatters. There was almost nothing of his gloves left. He peeled his sub armour off and dropped it with the shreds of his gloves in the incinerator. His boots got a critical eye before they took followed their friends into the fire. They hadn’t come out of their confrontation with the bedrock very good form.

  
The hot water was exquisite pleasure on his skin. Vegeta stood and let the water pour over him, taking the grime with it. He poured a generous amount of his soap into the poofy sponge Bulma used on him when they bathed together. 

  
Vegeta stopped mid-scrub. He quickly rinsed the soap away and ran his hands over his skin. A broad grin split his face. He ran his hands over his body. Male laughter rang out in the quiet of the small chamber. 

  
“I’ll be damned!” Vegeta exclaimed with another delighted laugh. Senzu apparently had more magic than even the ability to instantly mend the destroyed bones of Saiyan tails. When you ate two, he guessed.His leather skin was smooth again. It was still tanned darker than usual, but the wind and cold damage was mended.   
He reached up and buried his fingers in his wet hair. The awful horse mane texture was absent, and he found the thickness of soaked silk wrapped around his hands.   
Not that I’m a vain asshole or anything but my mate will be pleased if I can make love to her without rubbing the insides of her thighs raw…

  
_Fuck._

  
Vegeta lowered his hands, really regretting that thought. His mind conjured the memory of white thighs and pink petals and his cock swelled with frightening alacrity.   
Vegeta looked down at himself. With a sigh, he tightened the muscles that would bring the length up against his belly and secured it with his tail. He continued to scrub but somehow that made it worse, though he avoided touched it.

  
When he stood facing the hot spray to wash his hair the water acted like tiny tongue down the length of the shaft; not helping at all. His mind filled with Bulma. He found himself pulling at the roots of his hair the way she did, massaging the back of his neck. Vegeta dipped his head forward and let the water push his heavy hair over his forehead to rinse it, hands braced wide against the wall.

  
“Bulma.” he murmured out loud. Vegeta was hard enough to hurt, so full of need and post battle lust. He hadn’t tended to this particular aspect of life in a very long time. It hurt to hold his erection close to his body; his tail slipped free and fell away behind him. He opened his eyes and let go of the muscles holding his cock upright. It fell forward to arch away from his body in a thick curve that ached inside.

  
He had stood in exactly the same posture against the wall of Bulma’s sleeping chamber once, holding himself up with his hands flat in the wall watching her take him with her mouth. Vegeta moaned and bent a little when his rebellious body clenched. She had cupped his full pouch with one tender hand while she sucked him deeply into her sweet mouth, not letting him pull away when he had tried to spare her. Vegeta remembered the taste of himself on her lips and in her mouth when he kissed her afterwards. That was possession.

  
The Prince rested his forehead against his bicep, closing his eyes. He would have given anything at that moment if he could have made Bulma appear. He needed her.  
Vegeta let his right hand wrap around the shaft of his demanding dick, the beat of his own heart against his palm. He stroked himself in the rhythm of the Bulma he saw in his mind. His hand softened and slid over the engorged tip, dragging a long moan. What he felt merged with what he imagined and Vegeta arched backward like a drawn bow. Seed pumped out him in thick gouts while he shuddered with the release of climax, his voice echoing in his ears.

  
His cock did not relax, he did not stop running his tight fist up and down the hard shaft. Without opening his eyes, the Prince turned around and leaned back against the warm wall so that the water sprayed over his head and down the rippled expanse of his chest and stomach. 

  
In his mind’s eye Vegeta had his mate’s legs wrapped around his narrow waist. Her small hands held onto his shoulders; breasts pressed flat against his chest. He’d fucked her hard; deep enough to feel the mouth of her womb inside her. Vegeta ran his finger tips over his lips, remembering the way Bulma kissed him. The taste of her smooth tongue. She was so demanding, so aggressive in the way she took her pleasure. Bulma had pulled herself higher, rubbing her clit firmly on the ridge of his public bone. Vegeta pressed his hand to the top of the root of his cock and made hard circles there. His other hand pumped his cock faster, just as he’d moved to thrust himself into her center while she rode him. 

  
He touched his chest where those full tits slid against his sweat slick skin. His tail wrapped itself around his waist and contracted, turning into her strong legs. Vegeta wrapped his hand around the sharp angle of his jaw and pushed his own head back. Bulma did that when she was close to coming and wanted to look into his dark eyes.   
He could see her. Her glittering eyes half closed and unfocused but looking straight into his. He could hear his name breathless on her lips as she called out to him. He tightened his grip on both his jaw and his relentless erection. Bulma took Vegeta as deep as she could when she came, the muscles inside her body exploding in shattering spasms of ecstasy. Vegeta slammed his fist into the base of his cock and squeezed with the pulsing joy that she gave him when she shared her pleasure with him. It was too much. Vegeta roared and bent double, both large hands wrapped around the jerking pillar that spilled his desire in a hot geyser between his fingers in a semblance of what it felt like to come inside the willing sheath of his blue eyed mate. 

  
Vegeta slid down to the floor of the shower, insensible. The climax lasted too long but he didn’t release himself until the organ in his hands finally went soft and pliant against his belly. Then he simply sat, breathing. Limp as a dishrag and utterly spent.   
By the time the Prince found the will to open his eyes and consider moving, the water had washed the pool of vicious semen he’d spilled away and was beginning to run cold. 

Vegeta didn’t bother to put anything on once he was dry. He wanted nothing more than to lie down. That plan fell apart the moment he approached his bed. It was very, very obvious that he had laid in it for many days without moving. Disgusted, Vegeta ripped all the linens off the mattress and carried them at arm’s length to the washing machine. Silently grateful for auto wash, he started the cycle and took fresh bed clothes from the storage cabinet. A lidded tin container fell from a fold when he pulled the sheets out, which he picked up curiously and took back to the bed with him.   
Clean linens in place, he slid his tired frame into the satiny softness and went boneless. Vegeta wasn’t exactly physically wiped; it was his mind that was used up. Too much had happened since the last time he’d slept, and his overwrought brain needed time to process and catch up.   
The last thing he did before he closed his eyes and let himself drift away was smile.  
>_>_>_

  
Vegeta did not remember all that took place the day before when he first woke. He was bleary and hungry. He was halfway through a ki charred roast of some sort when his mind turned all the way back on and he dropped the meat. He only stopped long enough to tug on a suit of sub armour and new boots before he was out the door, not even hunting for his usual gloves. Vegeta vaulted into the air and landed a fair distance away from the ship. After what happened, or could have happened to his ship last night, he was taking no chances.

  
It took some time to reach the right mind set and bring his ki in, but he would never forget the way it felt to turn gold. In Vegeta’s orderly mind it was not too hard to find his way back to that place. He drew the power deep inside and with clenched fists let it out with a war cry that broke into the deep baritone of an Ascended Saiyan. With another cry, this one of jubilant exaltation Vegeta was in the air.  
Many times that day he let himself fall back to his base form only to ramp himself up to Super Saiyan once again. Kakarot had told him once that he’d had a very hard time achieving the form again after the first few times. Calling it on demand when there was no threat had proven difficult and Vegeta was determined that he would have total control over himself now that he could finally transform. He did not want to ever feel the failure of the past two years again.   
Unfortunately, it was devastatingly draining to switch forms repeatedly. The Prince took it in stride. He resumed the careful regime of caring for himself that he’d maintained prior to his bout with suicidal depression. He ate when he was hungry, balancing his meals to keep a healthy assortment of calories. He slept when he needed to, though perhaps not as much as he should have. Impatience ran deep in the Prince; he was too eager to train at his new level to stay asleep long. And he practiced with his ki relentlessly. 

  
In the weeks that followed he perfected his own techniques and then taught himself new ones. One in particular he found useful was the ability to flash. This was movement at a rate of speed too fast to be seen. He nearly maimed himself with it the first few times because the searing effect of the air around him was strong enough to take even his bullet proof skin from the bones. 

  
At length there was nothing else he felt he could learn alone on his adopted planet. He let himself admit, in the quiet of his sleep cycle that he wanted to go home. He wanted to go to Bulma. 

  
There was very little to do in preparation to leave, he was ready within hours of making his final decision. Once the ship cleared orbital range Vegeta stopped the ship and went to the airlock. He’d been fantasizing for months about what he would do to this hellish, dead world once he no longer needed it. Blowing it off of the plane of the known universe did not seem at all like a bad idea. 

  
In his full armour he turned golden and taking a very deep breath, opened the airlock. The freezing vacuum of space enveloped him in moments, leaving him free to gather a planet killing ball of energy in the palms of his hands. The feeling was almost nostalgic. He had not had occasion to do this since leaving the abhorrent bug planet with Nappa.   
Vegeta hesitated. From orbit the nameless rock clod looked even more forlorn than it did from the surface. It sat alone in a section of nowhere space that it was not likely any living thing would ever have occasion to visit. Its distant double stars where too small and too far away to ever give it any warmth. There was not a single pathetic life form in or on it and probably never would be. It didn’t even have water on the surface. And it had been his temporary home for many months. He had fought the battle of his life there. In a way he suddenly felt a kinship to the deserted world, as if they had survived the near cataclysm of the meteorite together.   
The ki ball died away in his hands and Vegeta dropped his arms. He had fulfilled his promise to himself on the jagged stone of this wasted planet. It had been the very hardship he’d found there as well as the threat to his life that pushed him past his limits and made him Ascend, he was certain. If he had nearly died there, more than once, it was true also that he had found his reason to live.

  
The Saiyan Prince bowed his head briefly and raised the first two fingers of his mighty right hand in the ancient salute of his people.

  
“Farewell,” he said silently into airless space before stepping back into the airlock and turning his face towards home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to go home. My Prince. Warning: A little bit of lovely self smut. I had to. He had to.

**CHAPTER 5**

  
Bulma had thoughtfully programmed the ship with the co-ordinates of Earth, saving Vegeta the trouble of having to search for it. He stood at the panel before the pilot’s station and taped the contact to initiate the program and the view screen sprang to life, nearly making him jump out of his skin.   
Vegeta let himself collapse into the pilot’s seat, staring up at the high definition picture in front of him. He could tell the person walking toward the camera was Bulma by the sinuous way she moved, though oddly she had chosen to start the recording while she was out of focus. It was filmed in the lush foliage of the compound’s gardens, which Vegeta took in like a man who made been dying of thirst. How long since he had seen the colour green or a blue sky? The colours looked so much more vibrant after so long surrounded by shades of black and grey.

  
Bulma came into the view of the camera and Vegeta’s mouth fell open in astonishment. The Woman wore his pink Badman shirt, held together in front by a single button that did very little it hide the any part of her bare skin apart from her nipples. The only other thing she wore was a miniscule scrap of pink lace that did more to accentuate her womanhood than cover it. And that was it. Under the pliable fabric of his shirt two very hard nipples peaked like cherry pits. Vegeta made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, his skintight armour instantly becoming more than too tight. Bulma looked down out of the screen and her red lips curved into what was, without comparison the most licentious, lascivious smile he had ever seen in his life. Her eyes never left his face, but she ran her hands over her breasts. Teasing.   
Vegeta covered the rock-hard bulge making a ridge up to his navel with his hand, watching her. His mate cupped her tits just enough to show their outline, then pulled her nipples through the pink fabric. 

  
_Oh, my gods…_

  
Vegeta pressed down in his cock, breath stuck in his throat and his heart beat like a trip hammer under the hard plate of his chest plate. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing and never wanted it to stop.

  
One of her slender hands slipped down the exposed skin of her belly. The tip of a dark pink tongue appeared between her plump, ruby red lips at the same moment that her fingers found the center of the pink lace between her rounded thighs.

  
Inadvertently, Vegeta clenched his hand over the straining erection, which sent a tremor through his whole body. His eyes widened. She made little circles over the lace with the tips of her fingers, and her own eyes dilated. Vegeta’s heart skidded to a halt and with that several other of his life functions. Bulma licked her bottom lip, those fathomless cerulean eyes fixed on Vegeta. The hand on her chest moved up to her throat and to the side. The Woman deliberately pushed her long fingers into the collar to his Badman shirt and hooked the material with her thumb. Vegeta bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to taste blood, shaking with mindless anticipation. The fabric moved aside and Bulma bared the place between her shoulder and neck where the faint outline of his mark still showed silvery on her pale skin.

  
She traced it with her fingers. Her other hand rose from its teasing, one finger gliding into her mouth for just a moment. 

  
“I’m waiting for you, Prince Vegeta,” Bulma whispered. At the sound of his name on her lips, Vegeta lost the battle he was having with himself. He could feel it pooling low in his belly, sending jolts of exquisite pleasure through his body. There was no hope of stopping the effect she had on him.

  
Bulma turned around very slowly and started walking away from him. Three scintillating steps later the pink shirt slid down her arms and fell to the floor, leaving her bare except for the tiny pink straps that held the lace t-back in place. She turned her head, looking at him over her shoulder, all feminine curves and hidden treasure from behind.  
“Soon,” she promised and turning back let him watch her saunter away. Vegeta bucked upward in the seat, holding himself in a punishing grip and snarling with nothing less than animalistic ferocity, wracked with the release of pure male lust.

  
He watched her until she disappeared, soaking himself. When he was able to relax, Vegeta folded back into the chair, half out of his mind and half furious.   
“Vulgar fucking Woman,” he muttered to himself, glaring at the picture of the garden that remained on the view screen. He glanced down. The front of his sub armour from the bottom of his breast plate to his thighs was drenched and had turned a darker blue. “You’re going to pay for that one.”  
>_>_>_

Vegeta discovered that the video triggered by the homing program could be replayed by touching the contact again. Once the ship was set to auto pilot it’s way back to Earth Vegeta could only override it manually and he had no desire at all to do so. Instead, he watched her tease and toy with him at least once a day. Sometimes because he needed the relief, but most often just to see her looking at him and hear her voice. Vegeta was not a social being by any definition but he had been alone for a very long time. It made him feel less like he was the only living thing left in existence to be reminded that someone was waiting for him. It was easy to imagine that you’ve ceased to really exist when all you see day after endless day is emptiness. 

  
To help pass time Vegeta tinkered with the bots he’d rescued from the planet he still thought of as Crap Lousy. Two of the poor little things were active but permanently out of commission as far as he could tell. The Prince was not an engineer but having spent his life in space gave him some background to the things he’d learned watching his mate build and repair her inventions. The three that he could fix, he did. They could not spar with him, other than to provide obstacles to avoid but they were a sort of company and that was enough. He gave them free reign of the open areas of the ship. The little round bots flitted around from here to there like kittens, returning to their docks when they needed to charge. 

  
Vegeta spent hours daily in the highest gravity setting the machine could muster, perfecting the transformation in that environment, though he did not dare use any ki attacks in Super Saiyan form inside the ship. In his mind it would only be his luck that he would survive all this time only to blow himself up on the way back to Bulma and his son.   
He was so tired of charred and vegetables that he tried his hand at creating something that he didn’t have to consign to the depths of space through the air lock. Rice was easy enough; the heating unit had a setting for that. As to how to season it or what to else to add to it the young Prince had no idea. He tried different things and came up with what he considered a passable pork fried rice. Then he laughed himself into tears thinking about the expression on Panchi’s motherly face if she were to mistakenly eat a spoonful of the experimental dish. Vegeta was relatively certain that her version did not include diced apples or octopus but Vegeta liked both those things, so he’d gone ahead and thrown them in. The results were fairly dubious, but he was hungry and it wasn’t more charred freakin’ meat.

  
The Prince’s fastidious nature reasserted itself. He cleaned his space often and it was during this activity that he came across the tin container that had fallen out of the linens the night he’d changed the bed sheets after the battle. Vegeta wrinkled his nose at the memory of the smell rising from those sheets. He was revolted by his own behaviour. He didn’t even know how many day and nights he’d laid there, stewing in his own juices and starving himself.

  
These dark thoughts followed him to the entertainment area, where he took the box to open it. Daemons muttering him his mind…  
Vegeta shook himself bodily, banishing those evil memories to a locked room in his brain where they could quietly fade into deaths of their own.   
He popped the top on the case and was surprised to find a set of capsules. They were labeled and there were 6 of them. Absently, he chose one and turned it over to read the writing on the side. Vegeta made an extremely undignified squawking sound that no prince should ever make and sprang off the sofa to lift the table out of the way and clear a place on the room. 

  
He pressed his thumb against the button on the top and tossed it lightly onto the floor. The capsule blew up in a ‘poof’, its cargo released.  
It carried 14 meals prepared Panchi and flash frozen by her genius daughter. Vegeta was so absurdly overjoyed to see these that he never got around to being furious that he hadn’t known they were there all the time. Just the thought of such food made his stomach growl and his mouth water.   
To him it didn’t matter which one contained what kind of food, Saiyans were not known for being picky eaters. He chose two of the trays and slipped them into the heating unit. The rest he stowed in the freezing unit. To make room he very vindictively removed the asshole veg and put that crap back into the empty capsule. He would not waste food, of course, but he wouldn’t ever eat another charred piece of meat or a microwave heated vegetable again if he had a choice. The rest of the fried rice experiment went out the air lock. 

  
_That’s what you get. Fuck you space. Eat that, you empty bitch._

  
Vegeta blissfully stuffed himself stupid with dumplings, breakfast burritos full of eggs, cheese and bacon. He gluttonously heated up two more trays at random. These turned out to be apple cobbler and coconut shrimp. By the time he had gotten through the lot Vegeta was just about certain that he weighed 15 more than when he’d begun and that his cholesterol had to be over 9000.

  
With a jaw cracking yawn, he tossed the trays into the incinerator and decided he didn’t care. 15 pounds with his metabolism would wear off in one good days training and he still didn’t know what cholesterol was or why having it was not ideal. He just wrapped himself in his blankets and went to bed be happily fed for the first time in, what he felt like was forever.  
>_>_>_ 

  
The trip back to Earth was not technically as long as the one to the land of potential death had been but it seemed longer. Vegeta was impatient. He set the clocks on the ship to resume keeping Earth time and then had trouble reacclimating himself to a 24-hour day. But it was more that he knew Bulma was closer to him than she had been in nearly a year and a half. 

  
A train of thought that he had avoided at all costs asserted itself and Vegeta could no longer put it from his mind. 

  
_The child._   
_My son._

  
Just thinking about the child make his chest hurt. The baby would be about 8 months old now if Bulma had carried for a full Saiyan term of 11 months. By that age children from his race were out of their incubation pods and either preparing to go into the training required of all able bodied Saiyans or relegated to the ranks of those deemed unworthy of military service. They were sent away to learn some menial trade in support. He sat at the view screen, looking at the perpetual vista of the Capsule Corp gardens and wandering what his son would be like when they finally met. 

  
Vegeta did not doubt that the boy would be supremely powerful, even by Saiyan standards. He had, after all, felt his ki inside his mother. The child had extended his newly formed life force in defense of his mother when Vegeta had unwittingly detonated his own ki like a bomb and blown half a wing off of her house. He felt a sense of pride at that, though it was dampened by the fact the child had been protecting Bulma from his own father. 

  
It made Vegeta unendingly nervous to think about it. Not once in his life had the Prince ever considered taking a mate, even less had the idea of ever siring offspring come into his mind. Vegeta had not idea one how to be a parent. He’d never known his own mother. And his father was more of a trainer than a parent until the day he’d sold Vegeta to Freezer.Then he was nothing but a bitterness that the young Prince could never purge his hatred for or forgive.   
That is what made his chest hurt. He’d felt the barest brush of the little life inside his mate and Vegeta already knew he would slaughter entire species without a second thought if it was the choice between their collective lives and the single life of his son. He would sacrifice his own life for the life of a Saiyan half breed whom he had never even met. And he didn’t know what to do with that.

  
I _’m a fucking Super Saiyan and I’m afraid of a baby._  
>_>_>_

  
The computer chirped to get Vegeta’s attention. A punch of adrenaline shot through him. He had set the system to alert him when they reached the Terran solar system. He slapped the shut down on the GR and went to the bridge. Vegeta brought up the outside view on the big screen. Disappointed for a second that he saw nothing he recognized, he engaged the zoom feature and told the computer to locate the closest celestial body. The round blue shape of a gas giant filled the screen. A strange planet tipped on its side and a thin set of rings. Vegeta smiled warmly at the Planet Uranus. He knew exactly where they were.

  
“System, how long until this vessel reaches Earth orbit?” he asked, eager.

  
“This vessel will reach the Planet Earth in 39 hours approximately at this velocity.”

  
“System, disable location transponder and raise shields to maximum. Disable communication, as well,” Vegeta added as an afterthought.  
“Compliance.”

  
 _Good. I don’t want her to know I’m coming._  
>_>_>_

  
Vegeta sent the next 30 hours cleaning and prepping the ship for disembarking, along with anything else he could think of to keep himself busy. He found that he could not stay still, even for a few minutes. Not for the first time on this excursion Vegeta was supremely glad that no one could see him. He looked like an idiot and he knew it.   
Vegeta made himself lay down, as he was genuinely tired, and he did sleep lightly but was right back up two hours later and staring at the view screen again. Finally, he reconciled himself and just sat down in the pilot’s seat and waited. When the tiny blue dot that was Earth became visible on the screen to the naked eye Vegeta got up and went to the personal. He spent an hour meticulously grooming himself in a way that would have one think he was getting ready to greet the king of a foreign planet. Vegeta had not brought many things with him when he left but he took the last one out then.

  
His royal Saiyan armour. 

  
It was this armour, after which Bulma modeled the armour she made for him, but the set he held was more stylized and far less functional. 

  
Once he was dressed, Vegeta stood back to examine himself in the mirror. The chest plate was golden and shining, as were the shoulder straps and stomacher, the rest being molded iridescent white material that had the ability to conform to a variety of shapes thanks to its ribbed design. His form fitted sub armour clung to every microscopic ridge, dip and mound of his carved body like something that had painted onto his very skin. The colour was blue but a very dark shade that looked nearly black in all but the brightest light. The pristine white gloves went up higher on his arms than his regular armour, almost to his elbows as did the nearly knee high gleaming white boots. The left chest plate was embossed with the red trident symbol of the house of Vegeta. He ran his hand over it, pressed his palm to it in the sign of fealty and allegiance.  
Vegeta wrapped his tail securely around his waist and lastly, he connected the floor length red cape to the golden epaulets, sweeping it out and around him so it hung in regal folds down his back. For perhaps the first time in his adult life Vegeta felt he had earned the right to wear the uniform as was befitting his title. He would come back to his Bulma as a true Crowned Prince.

  
Back on the bridge Vegeta gave the verbal authorization to disengage the auto pilot, taking the controls himself. Vegeta flew steadily until Earth was big in the view screen, sighted the land mass that held West City and circled around it to the far side, setting the craft down at long last in the wildlands near North City where Piccolo typically trained.  
Vegeta stood for a few long moments at the opening to the hatch, staring straight ahead, composing himself. The hatch lowered and clicked into place, touching the green grass of Earth for the first time in 18 months. The sweet, rich scent of Terran air swept around the Prince. Vegeta inhaled deeply, held it and released it, savouring the taste. He made a distinct effort to suppress his ki as low as possible before he stepped out of his ship and let his feet sink into the soft flesh of the living, bountiful planet he’d missed so much. 

  
The clouds were white in the dark night sky and the moon was big but not full, so he stared at it for a little while. He walked in the grass, listening to the sound it made under his boots. He found a small patch of wild yellow flowers and couldn’t resist crouching down to rub his face over the butter coloured petals, taking in their herbal smell. It was a beautiful, untamed place. The one thing it lacked was trees, but he’d see them soon enough. Vegeta followed the sound of water and when he came to the stream, he removed his gloves and scooped up handful after handful of the clear, cold liquid. Whoever said glibly, ‘Water’s water, right?’ was an idiot.   
>_>_>_


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home Now.

**CHAPTER** **6**

  
Vegeta looked up at the sky and judged it to finally be late enough to leave. Releasing just enough ki to take to the air, he flew up high and headed toward West City, Capsule Corp and Bulma. 

  
The compound was dimly lit and the lights in the family section of the building were all out. Vegeta stayed above the rounded house, sending out his senses to find the ki signatures of the people inside. He found Dr. and Mrs. Briefs easily. That made him move the other side of the big building. Bulma preferred her privacy and kept her private rooms as far away from her nosy mother as she could manage while still being in the same house. Vegeta detected another ki, this one stronger than all the others put together and then doubled by 50. 

  
_The boy_.

  
Vegeta dropped down and looked in the window. He could see the little jail cell that humans confined their babies to while they slept but could make out nothing else. His heart contracted, thumping against his ribs.

There was time.

  
He floated around to the other side of the building to the large chamber that would be directly across from the sleeping infant. Bulma had given the baby the room right next to the one he’d occupied. For some reason that pleased the Saiyan. He flew over the railing to the wide set of double French doors that would open from her balcony to her bedroom. He landed silently.

  
Vegeta could see her. The shape of her hip, the curve of her shoulder as she lay on her side. His heart pounded hard enough that he could hear and feel it in his ears. There she was. He could scent her even through the glass. It was the unique scent that could be no one else but Bulma. Not billions of miles away but mere feet. Vegeta swallowed over the constriction in his throat and reached out to grasp the door handles with shaking hands. He stopped just short of touching them, remembering what he’d done to the previous set. 

  
_Did I come a 50 billion miles to be a coward or a man?_

  
Vegeta opened the doors.  
>_>_>_

  
Something clicked in the darkness and roused the Woman. A breeze blew across her face, ruffling her hair and her heart jumped in her chest. She opened her eyes. There was something…some sense that drew her. Slowly Bulma sat up. She was facing the interior wall. The breeze flowed over her skin again, bringing with it a musky, sexy scent mixed with sandalwood.

  
Bulma turned.

  
_Vegeta._

  
The Prince stood in silhouette, his hands on the doors, long cape and flame hair swept aside in the wind. 

  
They were both still. Vegeta frozen with uncertainty, Bulma with the fear that she was dreaming again.

  
Bulma broke first. She had to know if this time, out of the thousand that she’d seen him, he was real.

  
“Vegeta?” 

  
No one but a Saiyan could have heard the sound that came out as little more than a breath. He heard her.

  
The Prince did not answer with words. He released his hold on the doors and stepped back. Vegeta could not breathe to speak. 

  
He lit his aura instead, the light flaring around his body and his face so she could see him. 

  
Bulma’s eyes grew huge in her white face. She pushed the covering aside and got up, not daring to move too quickly lest he vanish. Again. She studied every inch of his beautiful face, every nuance of his body as she took one tiny step after another around the huge bed toward him.   
Vegeta did not move, even to breathe. She remembered his inhuman way of being still. His bottomless black eyes didn’t move from her face, even to look down at her body for a split second. 

  
“Have you come home to us, then?”

  
He drew him bottom lip in between his teeth, his canines glinting in the golden glow. Vegeta nodded almost imperceivably. 

  
Bulma could feel the heat rolling off of him in waves but it wasn’t painful in any way. Rather just an amplification of the alien warmth he had always possessed. She had come within inches of him. Bulma was afraid to touch him. Her heart broke each and every time she saw him in her dreams only to wake up to the same emptiness beside her. And he looked different. He was bigger, harder in some ineffable way. In his formal armour he was every inch a Prince from another race of people who defined regality without moving or saying a word. 

  
“Are you alright?”

  
Another tiny nod as he looked down into her eyes.

  
Bulma steeled herself and reached out towards him. The tips of her fingers touched his solid breast plate, the metal smooth and cold. His chest didn’t rise and fall with breath as a living man’s would but she could feel the thunderous beating of his heart even through the armour plating covering him. Reaching out with her other hand she gently laid it on the side of his face. 

  
Vegeta closed his eyes for a long moment, squeezing them shut in a way that made her think he was in pain. His aura brightened. It swept her hair back and pushed the thin fabric of her night dress flat against her body. It made the long cape whip and furl furiously. When he opened his dark eyes, they were shining in the glow he made around them both. 

  
“Did you-“ she stopped, afraid again. 

  
Vegeta knew what she was asking. This time he unwrapped his tail from around himself and curled it around the wrist of the hand on his face. The soft fur ran against her skin, squeezing for a moment, then he pulled her hand away from him and stepped back several feet. He stopped at the edge of balcony. Another step and he’d be over the edge.

  
“Vegeta please! Don’t leave me again!” Bulma cried in a decimated voice. 

  
The Prince pulled his hands in towards his waist and balled them into tight, large fists. The light surrounding him flashed and the resulting pulse of power almost knocked her down. Bulma grabbed the door jam for balance and looked up, pushing her hair out of her face.

  
Standing before her was her mate, transformed. 

  
**_Ascended._ **

  
His golden hair waved in the gushing flow of energy pouring out of him, as changed as his now pupil-less aqua marine eyes. A shining god harnessing the power of the sun and burning inside its corona. And he smiled. It was just the hint of a curve on his lips but it reached his eyes and tears welled up and overflowed from Bulma’s. 

  
She came to him then, no hesitation and no fear. Vegeta intentionally drew his ki inside himself, opening his arms to embrace her at so very long last. Bulma just wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed herself into him as hard as she could. The feeling of him, solid and alive and real was too much for her to keep inside and though there were tears running down her face she was happier than she’d been in what seemed like living memory. 

  
Vegeta folded his own arms around the small woman and held her delicately. He breathed for the first time in many minutes. Here was his Woman. And he was home.

  
She leant back so she could see his face, look into the eyes that were only different in colour.

  
“Will you speak to me? I’ve missed your voice so much, Vegeta,” she asked, only inches away. 

  
Vegeta could speak. He had air in his lungs again. He was wary of how she might react when she heard him now. But she would have to know: this is what he was now and it was only one more thing that was altered.

  
Looking at her, he leaned down to her ear and in the deep double timbre whispered, “Bulma.”

  
When he stood straight again, she was staring at him, stunned. 

  
But not for the reason he was worried over. 

  
“You sound like you haven’t spoken out loud to anyone in a very long time,” she said in a voice that dripped with sadness, “God, Vegeta have you been **alone all this time**?”  
>_>_>_

Bulma pulled her silent mate into the bedroom and closed the doors to the balcony. She was loath to let go of him for even a second; the fear that he would vanish would not leave her for quite some time. Vegeta followed and let her direct him to the settle. He stayed in his golden form, wanting to give her time to get used to him, but he dropped his power level down to the bare minimum. 

  
Bulma sat down next to him, her eyes huge in her face. 

  
_This won’t do._

  
Vegeta simply lifted her off the settle and wrapped her in his arms against his chest. He wanted to feel her. To convince himself that she was real and that he was really there with her. None of this seemed real after so, so long. 

  
Bulma wrapped her slight arms around his neck and buried her face under his chin, the scent of saltwater rising from her again. Vegeta wiped the tears away with his thumb, buried his face in her hair and tried not to crush her. 

  
His voice came out in a whisper when he tried again to speak.  
“Is the child…well?” 

  
Bulma gulped a deep breath and leaned back so she could look into Vegeta’s face. She could not help herself; she’d been starving for the sight for so long. 

  
“Trunks Vegeta Briefs.”

  
Vegeta rolled that over in his mind, repeating the strange, human name to himself. The desire to see his own progeny was suddenly overwhelming. He didn’t know what his face looked like to Bulma, but she stood up and wrapped her fingers around his gloved hand.

  
“Come,” she said. 

  
Vegeta felt as though his stomach were on fire. He could sense the child but somehow knowing he would see him was overwhelming. He couldn’t imagine.

  
“He’s beautiful, Vegeta. He looks very much like you,” Bulma said against the side of her mate’s face, soft lips on his cheek. 

  
They walked out and across the hall. Vegeta stood before yet another door he was afraid to walk through. Bulma opened the door and stood aside, waiting.   
Vegeta did not move. His body solidified, paralyzed by some emotion he couldn’t even name.   
Bulma watched him for a moment and reached out to cup his face. A small smile curving her mouth.

  
“You’re doing it again,” she said, shaking him gently, “You have to breathe. You scare me when you turn yourself to stone like this.”

  
Vegeta opened his mouth and took a deep breath, turning to look at the Woman. He suddenly came back to life, taking her face in both hands and covering her mouth in fierce possession. She was more than eager, crushing herself against him with all the desperation of the past 18 months spent without his heat and his passion. 

  
Vegeta kissed Bulma with bruising force, though the way he held her was delicate. All his dreaming came back to him when those feminine hands fisted in his hair. He remembered how perfectly they fit together, how well suited they were for each other. His mate was only two inches shorter than the Prince; he loved not having to bend to kiss her, loved that when they stood face to face, he could directly into her eyes. Her scent, her taste…it all came flooding back and he pulled her up tighter against himself.  
Bulma stepped up on the backs of Vegeta’s boots in an effort to get even closer. His tail snapped around her waist, holding her just as surly as his crossed arms behind her back. She closed her eyes against the light surrounding them; felt him rise into the air, though she didn’t think the Prince meant to. 

  
This was what had kept her from drowning in his absence. The hope and belief that when he returned, he would still have the burning desire for her that she had for him. She could feel his body through his armour, feel the terrible need in the way he ravished her mouth. 

  
A small sound from the room behind her broke Bulma and her Prince apart. The brilliant flaring aura had lit up the space and awoken the baby in his crib.   
Bulma pulled back, trying to get control of herself. Vegeta looked around like a man in a daze for a minute, realized he was hovering a foot off the floor and possibly blinding his small son. He returned to the floor and stared into his mate’s eyes for one more long moment before he released her.

  
He was ready.

  
Vegeta let his aura dim and then let his power level drop altogether. His hair streaked back to its midnight black, as did his eyes. He would meet his son in his natural form. Bulma went into the nursery and flipped a small lamp on, checking on the baby in the crib. 

  
Vegeta followed her slowly, almost warily. 

  
The small boy looked up at the two adults who stood over his bed with a kind of curiosity no human baby would have possessed at such a young age. He did not cry or even fuss. He made a smile for his mother, but it was the dark Saiyan who drew his attention. 

  
Vegeta took in every detail of the small child. He did not look like a Saiyan, though it was obvious by the strength of his ki that he was not a human. He had large blue eyes the same sapphire shade as his mother’s and a smooth cap of lavender hair that framed his little face. 

  
_His face._

  
Vegeta swallowed over the choking constriction in his throat, looking down at his son. The alert expression, the shape of his features; he was 100% Vegeta.

  
“Trunks,” Vegeta acknowledged, reaching out as if to touch the boy. He stopped short, never having had the occasion to so much as be in the same room with a baby before.   
Bulma blew air out, as though she’d been holding her breath and plucked Trunks out of the crib, letting his blanket fall away so his father could see the sturdy shape of his son. Without warning him, she deposited the child in Vegeta’s arms, which came up automatically to hold him.

  
Father and son stared at each other. Trunks was serious, his brows drawn over his eyes in a way that painful for Vegeta to look at because it was so incredibly familiar. The Prince leaned forward slightly and took in the baby’s scent with deep draughts of air. He’d never smelled anything like it, and it was at once burned into his brain; Trunks smelled amazing. 

  
The little boy put a hand on each side of Vegeta’s face as though he wanted to memorize the shape. Such little hands. And yet the Prince caught his breath at the strength of the child. It was inherent and the baby wasn’t even trying to use it. What Trunks did next nearly killed his father with shock.

  
Trunks made a face which Vegeta could only interpret as intense concentration and there was a soft rending sound like ripping fabric. The child made a happy sounding noise that wasn’t exactly a laugh but wasn’t far from it. A lavender tail snaked its way around the boy’s waist, curling at the tip, reaching for his father. 

  
Vegeta’s mouth fell open in a little ‘O’ of utter surprise and his eyes flashed blue. The Prince looked over the baby for a second at Bulma, who was grinning with wet eyes. She felt as though her heart might literally explode, watching this long waited for scene. The tears spilled; Vegeta’s own long, dark tail came up over his shoulder and wrapped around his son’s short, fuzzy one. The two Princes stayed like that until the smaller one fell back asleep in his powerful father’s arms.   
>_>_>_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was entertaining enough to take up a little time in the corona lock down. Be well.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll post more chapters of this possible disaster readily. Thanks to the quarantine, my Prince and I have a lot of time to spend together. I'll give a special kudo to EfriZ on YouTube. She is a beautiful human who gives me so inspiration.


End file.
